Blog to the Past

Last week we attended Brick Live at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. This was a mammoth four day event, the biggest yet to be held in Scotland.

We were represented by our most northerly builder Dan Harris, who traveled south from his home in the Highlands with a car full of LEGO Vikings. The model on display was our Anglo-Saxon monastery which was originally part of last year's England 793, a model that is available for rent on its own or as part of our historical model collection.

Vikings, monks, fire, cliffs and goats... the model's got it all!

Dan, who was joined in the Fan Zone by his friends from Tartan LUG, as well as a few new ones from further afield, said:

"It's been one heck of a show and I feel as though I could sleep for a week... I started to lose my voice sometime during day two and it's still not yet fully recovered! I had a great time with some great people and it was amazing to meet so many new faces. Scotland has a lot of hidden LEGO builders who seem to be only just discovering the wider community and the show seems to have been a great way of bringing them together. I'm really looking forward to seeing how things grow over the next few years!"

If you ever want to simulate the experience of an animal in a zoo then exhibit at Brick Live. In Brick Live however, the visitors are allowed to feed you.

Dan's LEGO models can currently be seen at two other Scottish venues this summer, with the Caithness Broch on display at the Caithness Horizons Museum in Thurso and a model of Corgarff Castle at the real Corgarff Castle in Aberdeenshire. There will also be other chances to see the LEGO Vikings with the next two-day show, the appropriately named Awesome Bricks, being held at the National Museum of Flight on the 26th and 27th of August.

We'll next be on display at Peterhead's Brickmania event, held at the town's excellent Prison Museum - the perfect place to lock up your family members for a few hours of LEGO fun.

The event is for one day only and will be held on 15th July 2017 during Peterhead Scottish Week. Doors are open from 10 am and close at 4 pm and tickets are £3 per person and under 5s go free!

We'll be there with our LEGOfarne model so come along and get down with our horde of marauding Vikings! It'll be a day of displays from some of Scotland's most talented builders, play and competitions involving all aspects of the LEGO brick!

Our models are massive and this means they only have a limited lifespan and are taken apart so that the parts may be recycled. They are never completely dismantled though because we like to keep parts of them so that they can be rented out and taken to other shows.

From England 793 we are keeping the island monastery built by Dan Harris and it is available to rent along with a number of other models. We call this part of the model 'Legofarne'.

The island is based on the famous Anglo-Saxon monastery at Lindisfarne in Northumberland, which was founded in the year 635. It was here in 793 that the first Viking raid is said to have taken place; famously the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reads:

"In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of Northumbria. There were excessive whirlwinds, lightning storms, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and on January 8th of the same year, the ravaging of heathen men destroyed God's church at Lindesfarne."

Of course, this is not a scale model of Lindisfarne as such a thing would be wildly impractical and arguably, not that interesting as it would mostly consist of sand dunes and tidal mudflats, but efforts were made to take certain key features and place them in the model. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the tidal causeway that connects the island to the mainland. This feature was picked up instantly by many of the visitors to our shows and essentially provided the model with all the context it needed.

The second feature is the small island on the eastern side of the model, complete with hermit in residence. This is based on St. Cuthbert’s Island, which was occupied by the eponymous patron saint of Northumbria in the early 8th century. Of course St. Cuthbert was long dead by the time the Vikings turned up, but since he occupies such an important place in the area’s history, it felt important to include a reference.

Because the later Norman priory obliterated any obvious evidence of earlier occupation the buildings on the main island are based on what we know of Anglo-Saxon building techniques from other sites. The priory, which is now owned and run by English Heritage, has an excellent museum describing what the Anglo-Saxon monastery probably looked like in the late 8th century and so this is what has been drawn upon.

If you are interested in renting this model then we can be contacted by emailing us at:

Sunday was the Aberdeen Children's Hospital Lego Show at the eponymous city's Airyhall Community Centre. This is the first show we've attended in Scotland and sent along Dan Harris to represent us. He took with him part of England 793 as well as a couple of smaller builds, one of which we are yet to reveal to you.

Dan said "the show was really fun and it was a pleasure to meet some of Scotland's best and most enthusiastic builders. The show's visitors were also great and I'm looking forward to future events!".

The show was organised by the local LEGO Club, Granite City Bricks, and raised money to buy LEGO sets for Aberdeen Children's Hospital. We thank the organisers for a great event and wish them luck with future ventures!

Last week we bought you our official photos of England 793 as seen at the Great Western Brick Show. You can see them again on the build's webpage. There were however lots of photos that didn't quite make the cut, because basically, there are only so many photographs a webpage can handle. So today we bring you our most loved extras.

A special thanks must go to Andrew Whyte of Long Exposures for taking many of the photos and Blocks magazine for arranging it. They were taken for an article in Issue 24 of the magazine, which is still on sale now. It's well worth getting a copy as it has lots more awesome photos as well as some interesting (at least we think they're interesting...) interviews with our builders.

Today we bring you another small build from this year’s Great Western Brick Show and yes, it’s another board game. If you think that this particular game looks a bit familiar you would be right, because this game is called hnefatafl, and we bought you a different version of it a few weeks ago (The Beautiful Game of Ard Ri). This version is the game in its classical form and it was made by our board game aficionado, Simon Pickard.

Hnefatafl.

Hnefatafl, which means King’s Table, was a popular game in medieval Scandinavia and is mentioned in several of the Norse Sagas. It is rare in that it is one of the few games that comprises of two unequal sides.

In Hnefatafl the defending side comprises twelve soldiers and a king, who start the game in the centre of the board. Their objective is for the king to escape by reaching any of the four corner squares. The attackers comprise twenty four soldiers positioned in four groups of four around the perimeter of the board. Their objective is to take the King. All pieces move like the Rook in chess and pieces are taken by "sandwiching" i.e. moving your piece so that an opponent's piece is trapped horizontally or vertically between two of yours. The attacking side starts first.

James Pegrum works it for the camera for our forthcoming Blocks Magazine article.

This year we were once again in the Caerphilly Hall, sitting under the imposing shadow of the Caerphilly Castle, once upon a time the world’s fastest train. Lego Hastings made a return and was the first model people saw on entering the venue. Our centrepiece however was a much expanded England 793, with new additions from Simon Pickard, Tim Goddard, James Pegrum, Jimmy Clinch and Dan Harris. The model now covers an enormous 16 square metres and was built on 105 48x48 stud Lego baseplates. Every year we get asked how many pieces go into our models and every year we have no idea, but we are talking somewhere in the high 100,000s for this one.

Getting busy.

Key features of England 793 include an island monastery inspired by Lindisfarne, a ship burial representing Sutton Hoo and an Anglo-Saxon village based on West Stow. A further neat touch was a vast cavern filled with dinosaur bones, which sat under a soaring hill of over 30 bricks in height. Running amok among this sweeping landscape was an army of Viking raiders who are bent on plundering the treasures of the poor Anglo-Saxons.

A shot of England 793.

This year’s show also coincided with Swindon 175, which celebrates 175 years since the birth of the Swindon Railway Works. We couldn’t let this go without note, so we bought along a mosaic of the founding father himself, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Brunell, in Lego form.

We also had a number of smaller models on display, including a Nine Man’s Morris board, a couple of versions of hnefatafl and, in contrast to England 793, our first ever micro-scale build. The micro-scale build is particularly special as it represents the first stage of our work for Caithness Broch Project – a miniature Lego Broch. Brochs it appears are not well known in southern England so we had a great time spreading the word.

Micro-brochs and ye olde board games.

Spreading the word about brochs.

We were once again delighted by the reaction to our models and cannot wait to return next year.

Official photos of our models will be uploaded to the website as soon as we finish editing them. Watch this space for updates!

Here at Brick to the Past we don't just concern ourselves with building enormous, sprawling landscapes and minifigure scale buildings. Sometimes we like to build what we refer to as 'artifacts', which are used to compliment our main builds. So we have a treat for you today because here's one of the artifacts we've created to compliment this year's big project, England 793, which is currently on display as part of the Bricks in Time exhibition at Rheged.

Ard Ri is a variant of the game Hnefatafl, or simply Tafl, which is one of the oldest games in the world and can be traced back in various forms to the Vikings, Welsh, Saxons and Irish. It is rare in that it is one of the few games that comprises of two unequal sides. Ard Ri is played on a smaller board and with fewer pieces than standard Hnefatafl and it is one of the most challenging forms of the game.

Ard Ri is a game of two unequal sides

In Ard Ri the defending side comprises eight soldiers and a king, who start the game in the centre of the board. Their objective is for the king to escape by reaching any of the four corner squares. The attackers comprise sixteen soldiers positioned in four groups of four around the perimeter of the board. Their objective is to take the King. All pieces move like the Rook in chess and pieces are taken by "sandwiching" i.e. moving your piece so that an opponent's piece is trapped horizontally or vertically between two of yours. Unlike other versions of Hnefatafl, in Ard Ri the defending side starts first.

The defending side's aim is to get the king to one of the board's four corners

Ard Ri is associated with the Scottish Highlands with Ard Ri meaning 'High King' in Irish Gaelic. 'Irish Gaelic' you may ask? Well Scot's Gaelic is part of the same linguistic family and in fact comes from Ireland.

Ard Ri and Hnefatafl sets often contained intricately carved pieces and beautifully decorated boards and this is what we've tried to create here, taking inspiration from traditional designs and the iconic Uig Chessmen.

Boards were often decorated with naval designs and monsters from legends

The creation of this set was in fact a collaborative between our builder Dan Harris and his girlfriend, Dot Greaves. In fact it was Dot who created the intricate mosaic that decorates the playing board. The collaboration occurred by accident when Dan, having started the project, had to go away for a few nights for work. When he returned the mosaic was a lot more complete than when he left it; which just goes to show, when you leave your Lego lying around, beautiful things will happen.

We will be taking this set to The Great Western Brick Show in October, why not come along and challenge us to a game: